


Diner Date

by Neyiea



Series: But you can't be free, 'cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene [5]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: At least when people he cares about are hurt/threatened, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark-ish Bruce Wayne, Episode: s04e16 One of My Three Soups, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: Jerome is finally out of Arkham but not everything is going according to plan. Thankfully luck, and true love, are on his side.
Relationships: Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne
Series: But you can't be free, 'cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1472327
Comments: 56
Kudos: 163





	1. Jerome

**Author's Note:**

> I am back and so, so ready to remember how to write for this AU again, lol.
> 
> If there is one thing that you must know about me it is that I will never be over the canon Jerome and Bruce interaction that happens during this episode. Cameron Monaghan is a gift and the look in _his eyes_ when those few seconds of vulnerability leak through are just, gosh, *chef's kiss*. I am so happy that, after a few months of focusing on other things, this part is the one that I'm coming back to.
> 
> xoxo

The burning is not an unfamiliar kind of torture—his uncle had always had a pot boiling on a stovetop or a pan sizzling in an oven—but it has been a while since something like this was used against him. The soup bleeds into the edges of his scarred mouth and pours down his chin in an agonizing trail that leaves everything in its path swollen and red. Knowing his uncle, this won’t be the only attempt at teaching him a lesson. 

Knowing his uncle, the worst is yet to come. 

He’ll find a way out of this. He will. He’s too goddamn cunning for one surprise to ruin everything, and too goddamn close to not fight tooth and nail to get what he came here for. He’s not a kid anymore, not someone who can be taken lightly and pushed around. The pain will pass. His uncle is going to slip up. Jerome is going to enjoy killing him, is going to revel in making him _cry_.

He might revel in the act even more than he had when he killed his mother.

His hands twist and his restrained body jerks, instinctively trying to get away even though he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

Just like old times. 

He coughs, wet and rasping, as his uncle says something to Lunkhead. His eyes are watering, his ears are ringing, he’s going to break open their ribs with his bare fucking hands once he’s free.

The bell attached to the door chimes; the cheery sound a bright contrast to the diner’s horrible backdrop.

Jerome’s clenched eyes flicker open as he’s forced onto his feet.

The police had already left this place behind, but who else would be stupid enough to disrupt—

Oh.

_Oh._

Of course.

It hurts, but he can feel his mouth stretch into a smile.

Hello sweetheart, he thinks, half delirious from pain. 

This wasn’t what he had planned for their reunion, not at all. Bruce was making a habit of changing the game in ways that Jerome secretly, and not-so-secretly, enjoyed. 

Bruce says something, voice rough. Jerome’s frenzied mind can’t seem to process the words, still too caught up with processing his pain.

You found me first after all, he thinks. Ha.

If he wasn’t almost breathless from Lunkhead’s forearm pressed tightly against his throat he’d start laughing. 

He closes his eyes and tries to focus.

His uncle says something about “psycho” and “Arkham” and “giving him what he deserves”. Jerome would be fantasizing about cutting him open if it weren’t for the unexpected guest to this awful party. Bruce takes up—requires, is worthy of—most of his attention.

“I know who he is.” Bruce grits out. “No one deserves this. Stop,” he commands. There’s so much authority in his tone, so much barely contained rage. Jerome’s eyes flutter open to take him in properly now that the worst of the pain is abating. Not over. Not by half. But lessening enough that Jerome’s mind is starting to function at its usual level of irrationality. 

The look on his face is breathtakingly familiar—terribly beautiful in the barely contained violence it foretells—though usually it’s Jerome himself who has stoked the fire of his anger. Oh, Jerome has dreamed of the day that he would be able to catch a glimpse of Bruce glaring at _someone else_ like he was going to rip their heart right out of their chest. It feels like some sort of divine providence that the unfortunate souls who sparked the dark, raging wildfire inside of him had turned themselves into targets for his wrath because of what he’d found them doing to Jerome.

Will he lash out at them? Will he hurt them? Will he tear them apart?

Will he destroy them? Will he enjoy it?

His expression is dark and foreboding, and it makes Jerome’s heart trip in his chest.

His uncle’s voice is nothing more than an unpleasant buzz that Jerome can’t bother to discern because Bruce’s reaction is what deserves his focus. Always so noble. Always so sweet. Always on the verge of reacting drastically when someone he cared about was being threatened; Jerome loves that about him—he’s predictable in his volatility. Jerome knows what will make him react even if he can never be totally sure _how_ Bruce will lash out. 

And Bruce will react to this, Jerome knows it deep in his bones. They’re linked by so much more than threats and fights and kisses and sex. They’re each other’s destinies. Jerome has cheated fate in order to ensure it. Jerome has burrowed his way into Bruce’s life, into his heart, and that means Bruce’s chivalrous nature is going to work in his favour this time around. 

_He_ has become someone that Bruce cares about. 

Bruce’s lips press into an unforgiving line and something behind his eyes blazes to life; brilliant and devastating and vengeful. The air in the diner seems to shift, or maybe it’s all in Jerome’s head. Still, if Bruce wasn’t radiating danger before he certainly was now, and Jerome isn’t the only one who’s noticed. 

There’s a split-second, before he’s pushed aside so that his uncle’s hired muscle can attempt to take out the new threat, where Bruce’s ferocious eyes meet his.

Fuck, he’s gorgeous. 

Jerome really is in love. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

Lunkhead lets him go and Jerome wants to see exactly what Bruce is going to do while he’s running on so much rage and instinct that he’s willing to start a fight that no one would think could possibly end in his favour. Even if it’s unlikely that he’ll fight dirty in order to even the odds Jerome wants to watch, wants to etch it into his memory so that he can savour it, wants to have his back so that Bruce doesn’t end up like he ended up—but he needs information, his plan has come too far for him to trip up at this point. 

He’ll help Bruce soon, but he can hold his own for now. Jerome believes that much, at least.

Bruce is so much stronger than anyone would guess.

It’s not long until he has a gun in his hands and the situation with his uncle is back under control. His attention is constantly shifting back and forth—Bruce is wild, a snarl on his face as he does everything within his power to take down a grown man that’s more than twice his size—but his uncle is too rightfully terrified to notice. 

Shooting him in the head had seemed like too quick a death three minutes ago when the sensation of boiling liquid searing his skin had brought back the worst kinds of childhood memories, but it seems efficient now. Besides, what did his uncle’s execution matter in the grand scheme of things? He meant nothing, and dead was dead. 

It does still feel good to kill him, even though it hadn’t been drawn out. 

The sound of the gunshot makes Lunkhead pause and look back. It’s a stupid move, one that allows Bruce to land a kick to Lunkhead’s knee and slip out of the uncomfortable stance he’d been pressed into before ripping the broom out of Lunkhead’s hands. He brings it down on his head with a thunderous crack of splintering wood. Some people would have been knocked out by that, Jerome is certain, but the strongman is only stunned for a second before he’s turning and lunging—

Jerome knows what bloodlust looks like—knows all the dark and dreadful things that ordinary people are capable of—and Lunkhead isn’t just some jaded civilian looking for a fight, he’s the sort of character who his uncle trusted with his dirty business. 

—Bruce dodges, but there’s only so far that he can go in the cramped storefront of the diner, and even though there’s fire in his eyes and retribution in his heart all it would take is one lucky hit from a giant fist to daze him long enough for him to be in serious trouble.

But he’s not alone.

Jerome never wants to leave him alone again. 

Jerome aims. Shoots. Hits somewhere in the center of Lunkhead’s back.

He wavers.

Bruce lands a roundhouse kick against the strongman’s side. He falls to his knees but he’s still breathing, still reaching out with the intent to hurt.

Jerome shoots him again. And again.

And once more, just to be certain, even after Lunkhead falls onto his face. 

Bruce looks at the dead body laid out at his feet, but just for a moment, just for long enough that maybe he’s checking to make sure Lunkhead is no longer breathing. Then he looks up, and Jerome’s flickering contemplations about whether he’s going to receive a lecture about the use of lethal force disappear like smoke in the wind. 

He does so enjoy being the center of Bruce’s attention.

“My hero,” he can’t keep the words from tumbling past his lips. He doesn’t even sound mocking. Bruce quickly strides towards him, the casual disregard of the body at his feet making him more attractive than he has any right to be. In a handful of seconds Bruce is standing in front of him, looking at Jerome like he’s cataloguing every hurt, like he hates himself for not arriving sooner, like he wishes he could pay Jerome’s uncle back tenfold. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides and his breaths are harsh and uneven.

There’s a splatter of blood on his cheek. 

His eyes are still burning. 

“No one’s ever helped me before,” Jerome admits, and there’s something raw inside of him that he covers up way too late for Bruce not to have noticed. Fuck. “Never even tried to.” Not with words, and definitely not with fists. No one who’d known Jerome as a child had seemed to think he was worth the possibility of getting hurt over. “Then you come storming in, too stubborn to back down from a fight. It really makes a man wonder.” He lifts a hand up to Bruce’s cheek, smearing the blood there, an ill-humoured laugh coating his words as he asks with all the fondness that he’s capable of, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

And then—

Bruce barks out a laugh. Soft. Sharp. Borderline hysterical. His eyes go wide afterwards like he can’t believe himself.

There’s a heavy pause.

Then Jerome’s smile tugs wider. 

“I made you laugh,” he coos, something oddly triumphant unfurling in his chest. “You think I’m funny.”

“You…” Bruce’s hands unclench. Clench. Unclench. Hesitantly reach up to hover over Jerome’s burning flesh. “You,” his voice wavers. The fire in his eyes is dying out, flooded with something soft and safe. If anyone else looked at Jerome like this he’d break their fucking neck. “You’re unbelievable,” he finishes, voice cracking. His eyes are going glossy, and Jerome hasn’t killed anyone worth shedding a single tear over, so it must be for him. Precious boy, crying over the fate of someone as wicked as Jerome prided himself on being. Precious boy, how could Jerome possibly resist him? “Are you alright?”

“Never better, baby doll.” His uncle is dead. He has the name of the school that his brother had been carted off to. Bruce is here with him. Bruce had watched him kill somebody and hadn’t tried to stop him. “Never better.” Bruce’s hands are still reaching into his space but not touching so Jerome takes charge by nuzzling his face into one open palm. Bruce’s fingers twitch against him.

“How long were they hurting you?”

“Oh Brucie.” Jerome lays a gloved hand overtop the shaking one against his face. “Do you really want me to count the years?”

Bruce’s breath hitches. Shadows flicker behind his eyes again, dark enough that they make Jerome break out into goosebumps, but he clenches them shut before Jerome can get too excited by it.

It fights inside of him, the fury and the control, and when he opens his eyes the tender look is back.

“Someone’s going to report those gunshots,” Bruce tells him lowly, eyes darting to look out the windows. The street beyond is empty, but that seems to do little to ease his growing tension. “You’re going to go straight back to Arkham.” His voice is shaking, just like his hand. “You’re going to get put into solitary confinement to keep you away from other inmates. You—”

“You don’t need to worry about me.” He could mention that the whole city is getting too caught up in a different scheme for any officers to have the time to investigate a few measly gunshots, but that would possibly draw Bruce’s attention away from him and Jerome couldn’t stand that. “Neighborhood like this? Gunshots go off all the time. As long as no one’s dying on someone else’s property no one’s getting cops involved.”

“Not everyone around here is actually from the neighborhood.” Bruce’s eyes dart to the windows again. “And I don’t know if she would—” He cuts himself off, taking in a breath. His hand eventually stops trembling. “Jerome, you’re going to get caught.”

“Yeah,” Jerome breathes. “By you.”

The best person to get caught by.

Bruce purses his lips. His eyes look over Jerome with an intensity that makes him feel—hmm, happy, maybe, was what he was feeling. Pleasant little electric shocks under his skin—he looks at Jerome like he doesn’t want to leave him alone anymore, either.

“If I asked you to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten would you give me an honest answer?”

Jerome laughs, brief and harsh without meaning to be.

“Right.” Bruce’s hand slips out from underneath his own. Jerome doesn’t pout, mostly because twisting his mouth in such a way would likely be agonizing. “Sit down. I’m going to make you a cold compress.”

Jerome sits without making a fuss. Watches Bruce rummage through his uncle’s kitchen for a clean dishcloth. Watches him turn on a tap by pressing his wrist against it. Watches him test the water with his own hand before wetting the cloth and wringing it out. He could watch him forever and not get sick of it.

He stands back up as Bruce approaches him, and Bruce very carefully presses the compress against his mouth.

“Does that feel okay?”

“Better than okay, darlin’.” He murmurs, voice muffled by the cloth. He takes it out of Bruce’s hand and presses it against his lower lip and chin. “You’re always so good for me.” He looks at Bruce, lovesick as ever, and wonders how much it will hurt when he kisses him. Not that that’s enough to stop him, but if he happened to wince it would be enough to stop Bruce. “You really know how to make a guy feel cared for.”

“Of course I care,” Bruce tells him; quick and blunt as if he’s offended that Jerome might think otherwise. He doesn’t even look like he immediately regrets it. Progress.

“Why do you care?”

He knows why. But he wants to hear Bruce say it. 

He needs to hear Bruce say it.

Bruce is silent for a moment, dark eyes searching for something in Jerome’s expression before he appears to gather himself.

“Because.” Bruce reaches out, his hands landing softly on either side of Jerome’s face, avoiding his reddened skin. “Because you’re mine. If I’m yours, then you’re mine.” His eyes are burning again, this time with an emotion that makes Jerome want to crow in victory, or maybe sweep him off his feet and steal him away even if he hadn’t made plans for Bruce and himself to cross paths so soon after his breakout. “Do you understand?”

Of course he understands. 

Fuck, Jerome loves him.

He reaches with the hand not holding the cloth, only realizing after Bruce’s eyes have locked onto the movement with a little too much intensity that he’s still holding onto the gun. 

That’s when the tail of a whip comes out of nowhere and wrenches it out of his hand. The gun clatters to the floor, and it’s picked up by—

—ah, Bruce’s little former crush. His strange comments about not everyone being from the neighbourhood and a mysterious ‘she’ suddenly make a little more sense. Jerome is kind of—or very—resentful that they still seem to be on good terms. Where had she been when his boy was feeling lonely?

On second thought; maybe it’s good that she hadn’t been around to take advantage. Doubtlessly he’d have to murder her otherwise, and that would ruin Bruce’s romantic mood.

“Still don’t need my help, Bruce?” She asks as she points the gun at Jerome.

If she’d only just come in and hadn’t heard them speaking, then the first thing she’d seen was Jerome raising a gun in the direction of his one and only. 

Their most precious secret was still a secret.

“Selina,” Bruce implores, raising his hands and starting to move in order to stand in front of Jerome. “Don’t.”

She narrows her eyes at him, looking as though she’s contemplating shooting anyways. Bruce isn’t big enough to shield him completely, and—

Jerome really can’t get shot. He has so much to do. He—

He wishes they’d had more time before Selina crashed their party. Absolutely no one else in the city would have bothered to interrupt them, and now Jerome has to go without giving Bruce a proper goodbye kiss.

He lays his hands on Bruce’s shoulders and ducks down to whisper,

“I understand, Bruce.”

And then he shoves Bruce forward and runs.


	2. Bruce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, casually upping the chapter count: And you can have some additional plot, as a treat.

Bruce had been restless at the beginning of the night. He’d known that this would happen eventually. He’d known that one way or another Jerome would break loose of his chains in an ostentatious display—perhaps even more extravagant than usual to make up for the fact that the last time he’d broken out he hadn’t been able to make a true show out of it.

He’d known that he would do everything in his power to find Jerome, to stop Jerome.

To keep Jerome, that little voice in his head always seemed to tack on. He was becoming accustomed enough to it that the idea didn’t fill him with awkward discomfort any more. Bruce has been missing Jerome so much, even as he’s been gathering intel in an attempt to prepare himself for whatever awful scheme he was obviously concocting while locked away in Arkham with so many other mad, dangerous criminals. Bruce is happy, in a very particular way that he can never ever talk to anybody about, that Jerome has finally made his move. 

He goes to the station with Selina, if only to make sure that he hadn’t missed out on any files the first time he’d raided and made copies for himself, and when he’s sure that nothing new is there—

—when he’s sure there’s no mention of his last breakout anywhere, and no transcribed or recorded calls from Arkham from any employee who might think to tell the police that there were times when Jerome was a little too fixated on someone who he’d attempted to kill more than once—

—he heads out to the first place he thinks Jerome might be going.

He feels restless. He feels excited. He feels like he is finally playing the role of the cat during their games of cat and mouse. He will find him first. He will stop him. If it were at all possible he would keep him, too. Because if he was Jerome’s, then didn’t that mean that Jerome was—

The bright chime of the bell is a stark contrast to the scene laid out in front of him when Bruce walks into the diner. 

Bruce has felt a lot of things upon seeing Jerome during the tumultuous evolution of their connection, not all bad and definitely not all good. There has been fear and hate and revulsion and desire and something so affectionate that Bruce knows he’s a little crazy, a little sick, to feel it towards someone who has attempted to kill not only him but has also repeatedly threatened the lives of people that he cares about. He hadn’t been entirely sure what he would feel upon seeing Jerome again after even more months apart, but he’d assumed that even if he found him in the midst of something violent it would be improperly fond. Devastatingly tender. 

That is not what he feels when he lays eyes on Jerome. That is not what he feels at all. 

He’s being held down. His skin is red and raw. He’s hurt, he’s hurt, he’s hurt—

A familiar sort of rage—the kind that would engulfed him back when Jerome used to make implications regarding the wellbeing of Alfred and Selina—sparks to life in his chest even as he attempts to stay in control, even as he attempts to reason with people who likely cannot be reasoned with. Bruce is the sort of person who would throw himself into an impossible fight in order to defend those that he loves, and Jerome…

He is, against all odds and sanity and better judgment, one of those people.

His eyes lock on Jerome’s before the man holding onto him carelessly pushes him aside, and the blaze inside of Bruce’s chest burns even brighter. They are not going to stop just because he’d told them to. They are not going to do the right thing and call the police.

That means that they’ll have to deal with him, instead. 

He doesn’t care that he’s willingly entering into something that looks very much like a losing battle; he never does, not when his temper has been stoked to the point where it burns him from the inside. Because if he is Jerome’s—and Jerome was always so adamant that he was, so how could Bruce not start believing him? Jerome said he loved him, and Bruce had known that he wasn’t lying. It was a deliberately disclosed truth, absolutely, but definitely not a lie—then surely that means that Jerome is his.

Jerome is his, and Bruce is going to save him.

The rest is history. 

The sound of the first gunshot is not enough to startle him, because he’s glanced in Jerome’s direction whenever he has a spare split of a second and knows that he is the one with the gun. The next successive gunshots he should probably react to, because the man in front of him is unlikely to survive, but—

—his arm pressed tightly against Jerome’s throat, the burns on Jerome’s face, the stains on his shirt, the way Jerome’s uncle had told Bruce straight to his face that they were giving Jerome what he deserved—

—Bruce is not the one who killed him. Bruce is not the one who shot him. Bruce would have fought him until one of them dropped, but he would not have ended him for good. That will have to be enough to appease whatever traces of guilt he might feel when his rage finally burns itself out.

Jerome’s uncle is dead. The man who had held him down and let him be hurt is dead. Maybe that would have mattered more to him if Bruce hadn’t stepped in on and interrupted a torture session that undoubtedly would have turned even more gruesome if no one had been around to intervene. Maybe he will care about the deaths and agonize over his current apathy regarding them later. In the moment, though, the only thing that matters is that Bruce and Jerome are alive, and they’re looking right at each other.

“My hero,” Jerome breathes. He doesn’t sound like he’s making fun. Bruce’s heart seizes in his chest and he steps past the fallen body at his feet, closing the distance between himself and Jerome as quickly as he can. He looks at him, the sore skin and the bruises and the slight hunch in his posture like he can’t quite hold himself completely upright, and even though the people who are responsible for it all are dead the anger still blazes inside of him.

“No one’s ever helped me before,” Jerome tells him, and Bruce’s heart might actually be breaking apart at the look in his eyes. He’s never seen Jerome like this. He doesn’t think Jerome would have ever wanted to be seen like this. He thinks that if he were anyone else Jerome would kill him for seeing him like this. It makes Bruce feel dizzy. It makes his heart pound. It should make him angry, but he doesn’t think he’s capable of being angry with Jerome right now—not with his voice sounding so rough and soft, not with the way his eyes are reflecting the light. “Never even tried to. Then you come storming in, too stubborn to back down from a fight. It really makes a man wonder.” He lifts a hand up to Bruce’s cheek, barely grazing against him. Bruce resists the urge to lean into his touch only because he feels as though there is some sort of spell woven into the air around them, and soon it will break, and maybe this will turn out to be a dream and Jerome will still be in Arkham and Bruce will still be lonely without him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

There are so, so many things wrong with him. He can’t seem to stop the soft laugh that abruptly glides out from between his teeth and he can’t believe himself, laughing at a time like this. So inappropriate, so crude. He ought to apologize for it—

But Jerome’s smile widens.

“I made you laugh,” he coos. He looks pleased. Bruce’s chest flutters with a whole litany of too many emotions to name. “You think I’m funny.”

“You…” Bruce’s hands are shaking, and he tries to stop the trembling by clenching and unclenching his fists. That doesn’t seem to do the trick, so he reaches out to Jerome instead. “You…” He can’t bear to touch, everything looks so sore. He doesn’t want to be the cause of any more pain. “You’re unbelievable,” he manages to finish weakly. The people responsible for this are dead—and a part of Bruce, the one that Jerome wakes up in him, the one that’s steadily becoming more difficult to ignore, is pleased that they’ll never be able to touch Jerome again—but that doesn’t change the fact that Jerome has been hurt, and he can feel his eyes start to sting. Bruce always became emotional when people he loved were injured. “Are you alright?”

“Never better, baby doll,” Jerome rasps. The burns around his mouth, down his neck, the stains on his shirt—the inside of his mouth must have been burnt, too. No matter what he says, he must be in so much pain. “Never better.” He leans into Bruce’s outstretched hand, not seeming to care that the action might only cause him even more discomfort, and nuzzles his face against Bruce’s palm.

Bruce’s fingers twitch but he doesn’t withdraw, not even when his hand starts shaking so obviously that Jerome must be able to feel it.

He can’t pull away. Not from Jerome.

“How long were they hurting you?”

How long ago should Bruce have been here? How much time had he wasted double-checking files just to be sure that their tracks were covered? 

“Oh Brucie.” Jerome lays a gloved hand over top of his own. Bruce prepares himself for devastation. “Do you really want me to count the years?”

Something violent flares up inside of him, far too quickly for him to hold it back. He clenches his eyes shut and tries to reign it in. They’re dead, they’re already dead. Bruce cannot dole out justice because they’re already dead. Bruce cannot hurt them because they’re already dead. Bruce cannot kill them because they’re already dead. 

Jerome is alive. Jerome is alive. Jerome is alive and he’s right here and he’s watching and—

And he killed them. And someone is bound to have heard the gunshots. And Selina is hanging around somewhere, likely too close for comfort.

He’s going to get dragged away to a terrible place where people only ever seem to come out worse than when they went in. He’s not going to be cared for, they’ll leave him to suffer without treating his wounds—

“Someone’s going to report those gunshots,” Bruce tells him, eyes darting to the windows. Run, he thinks. “You’re going to go straight back to Arkham.” Get out of here before they get you. I’ll find you again. I’ll stop you again. “You’re going to get put into solitary confinement to keep you away from the other inmates.” No one’s going to make sure you’re okay. “You—”

“You don’t need to worry about me.”

Bruce can’t not worry about him. If Jerome had wanted to keep him from worrying he shouldn’t have been so eager to get Bruce all twisted up over him. 

“Neighborhood like this? Gunshots go off all the time. As long as no one’s dying on someone else’s property no one’s getting cops involved.”

“Not everyone around here is actually from the neighborhood.” Bruce’s eyes dart to the windows again. No one is outside, but their good fortune is going to run out someday. Eventually someone is going to be around to see them together, and already their luck seems to be slipping. “And I don’t know if she would—” He cuts himself off, taking in a breath. Selina’s not here right now. There’s no one but them. Alone together at long last. This is not what Bruce prepared for, not at all, but he has to take it in stride. His hand eventually stops trembling. “Jerome, you’re going to get caught.”

Bruce should want him to get caught. He does want him to get caught. But he doesn’t want him thrown in a cell by people who will ignore the fact that he needs medical attention and care. 

“Yeah,” Jerome agrees. “By you.”

He sounds happy about it, getting caught by Bruce. Bruce had been happy about the idea too, back before he’d actually walked into the diner and caught a terrible glimpse of what wicked people thought comeuppance looked like. Bruce has found him, has caught him, and if it were at all possible—but it’s not. Jerome cannot be kept. Jerome wouldn’t allow himself to be wrapped up like something precious and fragile and hidden away so that nothing could find and break him. But perhaps he will allow some things.

Because Bruce is his, and he loves Bruce, and that must mean that Bruce has some sway. 

His actions held power. His presence held influence. He was strong, maybe even stronger than Jerome knew, now, because knowledge was the power that Jerome had in spades and Bruce has been resolutely trying to catch up ever since he’d first had the stray thought of evening out the playing field between them.

“If I asked you to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten would you give me an honest answer?”

The laugh doesn’t surprise him. 

He feels like he’s on the verge of falling to pieces as he tells Jerome to sit down, as he goes about making a cold compress while being careful to turn on the tap with his wrist and not his hands—he is at the scene of a crime after all, and he can’t risk his fingerprints showing up absolutely everywhere—as he approaches Jerome and presses the cloth against his red, red mouth.

Jerome’s eyes are soft. His gaze is full of everything that Bruce is weakest against. Bruce had started the night sure that he was going to find the missing pieces of a puzzle and solve a mystery that he hadn’t told anyone else about—

His spare waking hours had been focused on one particular thing for weeks before the Arkham breakout.

He’d been searching, endlessly searching, for any trace that might indicate that Jeremiah Valeska was still alive. There were so few records as it was, and it was only by looking through tax forms that he should have never been able to get his hands on that he’d been able to make a guess at the year that Jeremiah—died? Ran away? Went missing?—when Lila Valeska received a letter telling her she’d erroneously filled out a section saying she had two dependants instead of one.

As Bruce had been fighting the strongman Jerome had been grilling his uncle about something, had threatened him for information, had given him a slip of paper to write on that maybe held information that would be the key to everything.

—but it all seems so insignificant in the moment, with Jerome here right in front of him.

Nothing but Jerome mattered.

“Of course I care,” Bruce tells him, too quick and too blunt, but he feels too raw around the edges to tamp down his emotions.

Jerome pushes—he always pushes—and Bruce always gives in. He shouldn’t give in. He shouldn’t say any more than he already has. He’d managed to keep it lodged firmly behind his teeth the last time they had been together.

But Bruce had been the vulnerable one the last time they were together. 

“Because,” he says as he reaches out, his hands cradling either side of Jerome’s face, careful to avoid his red, blistering skin. “Because you’re mine,” he tells Jerome, and he means it. If Jerome hadn’t wanted Bruce to get attached to him, then he never should have broken into his bedroom after the night of his mad carnival. It was all Jerome’s fault. “If I’m yours,” and he is, of course he is, “then you’re mine.” He cannot say that he loves him. He thinks he might break down if he does, but this is enough for now. It has to be enough for now. “Do you understand?”

Please understand.

Jerome’s eyes glimmer, and he starts reaching out, and Bruce spies the gun in his hand and cannot keep his eyes from tracking its progression even though he knows with certainty that Jerome would never shoot him.

And then the tail of a whip comes out of nowhere and wrenches the weapon out of Jerome’s hand.

No, Bruce thinks as his hands fall away from Jerome’s face. No, no, no.

He wishes they’d had longer.

He cannot be mad at Selina; it’s easy to guess what she must have thought was happening when she caught a glance of Jerome raising a gun towards him, but he is mad at so many other things.

Jerome’s uncle, and his hired muscle, and the entire situation that Bruce had walked in on. How dare they, how dare they, _how dare they_ —

Jerome’s hands settle on his shoulders and Bruce’s racing thoughts go still.

He can feel him lean in close. Can feel the warm, rough, inflamed skin of his lips brush against his ear as Jerome whispers,

“I understand, Bruce.”

And then he shoves Bruce forward and runs.


	3. Jerome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gotta have that little extra bit of _tenderness_. (Oh, and maybe some plot, as a garnish.)

Jerome releases the blade of his switchblade with a flick of his wrist, closes it, and releases it again.

Open. Close. Open. Close.

The look on Jeremiah’s face when they’d finally seen each other face-to-face after so many years apart—it made Jerome want to hug him and hurt him at the same time. All wide-eyed faux-innocence as if he didn’t have any idea about why Jerome was coming after him so relentlessly. He’d looked like that when they were kids, too. Delicate and soft. Maybe that’s why everyone found it so easy to believe the lies that spilled from his mouth. Who would have ever believed loud, trouble-making Jerome over quiet, composed Jeremiah?

No one. 

No one ever had. 

Open. Close. Open. Close.

Jerome doesn’t hate him—or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t hate him in the same way that he’s hated everyone else that made their truly fucked up family unit. If he did, Jeremiah would not have survived their confrontation last night. If he did, his plans for Jeremiah wouldn’t be so very interesting and so very entertaining. They were close, once. An entire lifetime ago. And then the person who he should have been closest to ran away towards a better life and left Jerome behind to rot. Cunning, for a child. Ruthless, for a child. Looking back at it all Jerome is left feeling almost-proud. He’d always known, even if no one had ever believed him, that he and Jeremiah shared more similarities than just their physical appearance. 

Jerome is not going to kill him.

He is not sentimental, not unless it involves the love of his life, but the poisonous stories that Jeremiah used to tell about him were not actually enough for Jerome to want to cut out his tongue and make him eat it. 

Well, maybe they had been back when he was younger, but he’d since outgrown those feelings. 

He had other plans, now. Better plans.

Open. Close. Open. Close. 

Born bad, ha.

Jeremiah would see, soon enough, that all it really took to make a monster was—

Oswald Cobblepot bursts into the room, looking all prim and huffy in a way that makes Jerome want to haze him just like he did when they’d been back in Arkham. He flips open his knife and gestures in Oswald’s direction with the dangerous edge.

“Lookin’ a bit stressed there, Mister Oswald,” he drawls. “Want me to show you how to turn that frown upside down?”

“No,” Oswald grits out from between his teeth. “Thank you.”

“Too bad.” Jerome turns to face him fully and stands up just so that he can loom over him. Oswald is still so obviously unnerved by him at times, and it’s dreadfully delightful to mess with him. He allows his smile to grow eerily wide just so that he can watch the shorter man fight to stay composed. “What brings you into my room at this time of day?”

He’d been up all night—mind spinning in tireless circles, hands itching to do something—after they had come back from Jeremiah’s hideaway, but Oswald hadn’t known that.

“You told me that no one would know where you were,” Oswald tells him in a decidedly clipped tone. “You told me that no one would be able to guess that I might be helping you. Well.” Oswald rips a piece of paper out of his pocket and brandishes it in front of Jerome’s face. “I believe you might have miscalculated!”

Jerome narrows his eyes at the paper, and incredulous laughter quickly bubbles up in his throat.

“What is that, a ransom note?”

Cut up pieces of glossy magazine ads are strung together to form words. It looks like the sort of note that a serial killer would leave on someone’s doorstep to tell them ‘you’re next’. Even in Gotham it’s such a fucking cliché that it makes him laugh even harder. 

“It’s not funny!” Oswald barely manages to keep himself from screeching. He clenches his eyes shut—likely trying to rein in his temper so that Jerome doesn’t decide to rip him to bloody pieces—and breathes sharply through his nose several times before he seems to calm down.

If you know where J V is please forward this to him, says the note.

Jerome is so goddamn charmed. 

“You have a package,” Oswald tells him briskly. “I left it outside. You can stay in the yard if you actually want to open it, because if one of your enemies decided to send you a bomb it had better not do anything to my house.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel special, Mister Oswald,” Jerome murmurs. “Where outside did you leave it?”

If one of the many people whose lives he’d turned into a hellscape wanted to hurt him they’d want him to know exactly who’d out-foxed him before enacting bloody vengeance; what was the point of revenge, otherwise? This mystery package was much, much more fascinating than a pathetic little bomb or a chemical weapon. 

He _knows_ with the same level of confidence as he _understands._

It’s cool and overcast as he steps outside, the light of the sun barely creeping around distant skyscrapers. He picks up the nondescript cardboard box with no return address and sits down right on the back porch to open it up just so that if Oswald happens to glance out a window he’ll throw a fit at the idea of property damage.

Inside the box there is another box—colourful, like it’s meant to be a present—and attached to that is a slip of paper. Jerome takes it and unfolds it, laughing again at the absurdity of the cut and paste note. Bruce could have just typed something out on his computer and had it printed. He’s so unnecessarily dramatic. Jerome absolutely adores him.

Take care. I’ll find you. I’ll stop you.

“I love you too, baby doll,” Jerome croons, folding up the note and carefully tucking it into his waistcoat. He opens the box.

Polysporin. Aloe gel. Non-stick gauze and medical tape. A bottle of painkillers just a little too strong to be over-the-counter that inform a Mr John Doe to take one pill up to four times a day when needed.

It’s an actual goddamn _care package._

Jerome covers his incredulous smile with a hand and laughs, curling over the box in his lap as if it’s something that he means to protect.

He’s been hurt so much worse than what Bruce had seen; the pain that his uncle had inflicted upon him this time around had been all but forgotten by the time he and Jonathan had snatched up Jervis, swept away in the excitement of everything falling into place as it was meant to. Frankly even Bruce had been the source of more significant damage—although admittedly Jerome had done more than enough to him to deserve a good thrashing, and admittedly as much as it had hurt in the moment it had also made him feel too many other wild and wonderful things for him to focus solely on his injuries. The pain he felt was nothing compared to the spark of true _interest_ and _want_ igniting inside of his chest—that night an age ago when Jerome first realized that Bruce was special. That Bruce had something dark nestled away inside of him which viciously clawed its way to the surface when you pushed him far enough. That Bruce was like him. 

That Bruce was meant for him. 

But this was so, so precious. 

And so, so telling. 

“I can’t fucking believe you sometimes,” he says under his breath once his laughter subsides. “Such a sweet, good boy, even if you’re full of so much barely contained rage and darkness.” He thinks back to what Bruce had told him.

If I’m yours, then you’re mine. Do you understand?

He’s never understood anything more.

“My good boy,” he praises, carefully closing up the box.

He could stand to belong to someone, as long as that someone was Bruce.


	4. Bruce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce may be all twisted up over Jerome, but otherwise he's still very much himself. ;) Let the boy try to help people.
> 
> xoxo

He’d been so caught up in other things—I understand, Bruce. I understand, Bruce. I understand, Bruce—that he hadn’t acted as quickly as he should have, and when he hears about the attack at Meyer and Hayes he knows he’s too late to do what he had wanted back before his plans of finding and stopping Jerome had screeched to a halt upon seeing him at the mercy of wicked people who didn’t know the difference between justice and torture—though Detective Gordon still seemed irate at the level of Bruce’s apparent involvement in the situation.

Bruce understands, he does, because Detective Gordon has known him since the most traumatizing night of his childhood and he must have felt awful that Bruce kept getting mixed up in the types of situations that Gordon undoubtedly would have loved to keep him safe from. 

But the fact that Detective Gordon is in his father’s study—where inside of his father’s desk lay a range of somewhat-to-very incriminating files that revealed far too much about what Bruce has chosen to start doing with his spare time—requiring his assistance because Bruce always gets mixed up into these situations whether he actually means to or not, is somewhat amusing. The Detectives' visit offers up more new information, too, and Bruce might just feel a little bit excited when they look through one of his father’s old daily planners and they find an appointment with the name Xander Wilde, as well as an address.

He has a brief and fanciful daydream as Detectives Gordon and Bullock go on their way. He thinks about following behind them, waiting for them to finish their business, and making his own introductions to a man that he is almost certain is Jerome Valeska’s long-lost brother.

But he has another project to work on, and he had enough faith in his favourite police officers to allow them to carry out their task unsupervised. 

This, at the moment, was more important than getting to the bottom of a mystery that was nearly fully solved.

Jerome would always be more important than a mystery. 

He cannot be entirely certain where Jerome is or where the other inmates who’d escaped with him had managed to disappear to, but there are only so many places in Gotham that known figures such as Jerome Valeska, Jervis Tetch, and Jonathan Crane can hide. And Bruce isn’t the only person around who knows far too much about the ongoings of the criminal underworld for his own good. His slowly growing wealth of information was out of a curiosity and a need to be prepared, but for others their continued familiarity and awareness of even the smallest details was their livelihood. 

When coming across a question that he did not know the answer to, would it not be for the best to pass it along to someone who might be able to figure it out? Without revealing himself, of course, because Bruce Wayne as he was known by Oswald Cobblepot should have approximately zero desire to find Jerome other than to perhaps slap a pair of handcuffs onto him himself. 

Oswald had been in Arkham for weeks. Oswald was a particular sort of person with a particular sort of history that Jerome would likely be intrigued by. Oswald knew that knowledge was power, too. If anyone had an idea of where Jerome might be hiding it would be him, if only so that he could know to avoid the area entirely. 

Bruce very studiously dons a pair of gloves, takes out a pair of scissors, and goes about flipping through a collection of old magazines.

It wouldn’t do to have anyone recognize his handwriting, after all. 

He glues together the letter to Oswald, first. He is more careful with the second, though even that he cannot write in his own hand. He isn’t entirely certain that the second letter will actually make it to who it is intended for, and, upsetting as that may be, he must also prepare himself for the fact that there is no guarantee that only one set of eyes is actually going to read it even if the letter makes it to its destination. 

He sticks the second letter onto the outside of a gift box with standard scotch-tape. He puts that package inside of a larger plain box and puts the first letter into a proper envelope. He prints out a label to attach the desired recipient and address, and then it is done.

All it takes is a bit of money—and enough people passing the package in between themselves for the trail to be untraceable, and no one knowing that he’s the origin point who’s paying for it to be delivered in the first place—to ensure that it arrives on Oswald’s front step.

He hopes that Jerome gets it. Someone had to care about his physical well-being, since he obviously didn’t seem to put much stock into it. 

With his task completed and the sun beginning to set, he finds himself restless again.

He cannot risk going to the address that they had uncovered so soon, because he cannot risk running into Detective Gordon if he was still hanging around, but there were other ways for Bruce to prove to himself that his theory was not just a shot in the dark. 

Breaking inside of Saint Ignatius is surprisingly easy, but then, Bruce is a little more adept at this than most his age.

He wonders what that says about him.

He tries not to think about it too hard.

He finds the library quickly, and near the front he finds the best and worst evidence that everyone was young, once: yearbooks. He may not have known the exact year of Jeremiah’s disappearance, but he knew when in time to focus his attentions and he flips through several years of these particular records in the hopes that he will find definitive proof of the thing that he is so sure of. 

Something in his chest lurches at the sight of one small face in black and white. It’s the only school photo to ever feature Xander Wilde, he discovers soon after, as he’d been absent for each successive class photo after his first.

Such a serious, bland expression in a sea of smiles. It makes Bruce feel oddly uneasy, even as his mind starts whirring.

There is so much he still doesn’t know, so much he still doesn’t understand.

But he knows that Jeremiah Valeska is alive, and that Jerome is looking for him, and even if Bruce would let Jerome get away with frankly too many things he cannot bear the idea of him killing the last family member that he has left. His mother and uncle Bruce could—Bruce could understand, maybe, even if he’d like to deny it. They had hurt Jerome; they should have loved him and protected him but they’d hurt him instead and Bruce can’t stand the knowledge that those who were meant to keep him safe had warped him into the person that he was with their cruelty. Bruce cannot deny that knowing that they weren’t around to hurt Jerome any more didn’t fill him with a dark satisfaction that felt just as wrong as it felt right.

But Jeremiah had been a child; only ten years old when he’d seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth. Children could be cruel, too—Bruce remembers this just as he still remembers both the cruelty of Tommy Elliot and what it had felt like to punch Tommy with his father’s watch wrapped around his knuckles—but was Jerome trying to find Jeremiah in order to kill him, or something else?

Bruce doesn’t know. And he cannot allow it to happen either way. Firstly, because Jerome needs to be stopped, and secondly because…

Because he looks at the unsmiling face of a boy who looks just like Jerome must have looked years ago, and even if that boy has since grown into a man he cannot help but feel a desire to protect him based on that alone.

It’s late, nearly midnight, Detective Gordon must be home by now.

No one has to know what Bruce gets up to when most of Gotham is sound asleep. 

He slips into the darkness, and he finds what so many people have been looking for recently. It is late, far too late to for any sort of social call, but it looks as though Bruce might be able to leave a message.

Looking up into the camera mounted on the outside of the building, an unblinking eye eternally recording the door, is a glaring reminder to be even more cautious about this than a face to face interaction. If he slips up at all his mistake will be recorded, it can be re-winded and re-played and picked apart until Jeremiah Valeska has even more reasons to distrust him.

“Hello, Jeremiah,” he greets, hoping that his voice carries. Hoping that the camera records audio as well as video. “My name is Bruce Wayne.”

The hush of the forest is eerie. The soft sound of wind rustling leaves, the distant rustle of small creatures in the underbrush, the conspicuous lack of a city’s usual white noise. Someone could disappear out here. Bruce almost wishes that he hadn’t come alone, but he’d known it would be too risky to bring along Alfred; not just because it might seem more threatening to the person who had hidden themselves away for years, but because this situation—and his adamant involvement in it—would raise too many questions.

Questions that it was far too late for him to start answering. 

Back before he’d known anything for certain he’d put a lot of consideration into the best way to broach the subject that, whatever Jerome’s next scheme was, Jeremiah would be involved. Being too blunt would make it obvious that he knew something, which would make his actions seem even more questionable, but concealing his suspicions behind too many words and vague manipulations would at best render his concerns superfluous and at worst paint him as being even more untrustworthy than bluntness would. The Detectives must have given Jeremiah the rundown of the current situation with Jerome, though, so Bruce did not have to say anything at all. He was walking a fine line as it was, and he didn’t even have the opportunity to read the expression of the person he was speaking to so that he could gauge whether or not he was doing a terrible job. 

He thinks of that small face. That carefully blank expression. He wonders if Jerome had ever looked that serious when he was a child, too.

He does not have to say anything. But he wants to. 

“Something is going to happen.” True enough. “I think it may be soon.” I know it will involve you, he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t want to frighten Jeremiah even further underground. 

He feels a pang of empathy in his chest, then, as he stands by the locked door looking up at the eye of the lens. He knows how it feels to be scared and lonely, but even in his darkest times he’d had Alfred, or Detective Gordon, or Selina, or even... Even Jerome. Always Jerome. Eternally Jerome. He’d never been as cut off from the world as Jeremiah, and certainly not for nearly as long. 

“I won’t let him hurt you,” he promises.

But he wouldn’t let Jerome get hurt again, either.

He’s not sure how he’ll find a way to protect them both, but he will.

He has to.

Later he will learn that no one was inside as he was standing at the bunker door.

Later he will learn that Jerome had made it in, and out, and that Jeremiah Valeska’s identity had been revealed to an entire police station full of officers as Bruce was leaving his message.

Secrets in Gotham never stayed secrets forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3  
> See you next time.


End file.
